Patrik Ervell
REVIEW
COMPLETE COLLECTION
NEW YORK, September 21, 2006
By
Patrik Ervell's 45-piece collection is almost double the size of last season's, but its ethos remains unchanged: "American sportswear without clichés" is how he puts it. Bear in mind that the sportswear item Ervell considers most iconic is the North Face jacket, and you'll get a reasonable idea of what he considers clichéd. Linen, for example, is a fabric he believes is dogged by association, so he washes it to remove its "crunch," then offers it in a shirt or a striped jacket with a slightly boxy "American" cut.But Ervell's quest for the new is perhaps best expressed in the idiosyncratic futurism that underpins his work (and we're not just talking about a T-shirt printed with an image of the moon's surface, or the shirt print derived from a Russian computer program to combat counterfeiting). There's a blouson made from cotton recycled from old parachutes (the kind that dropped bombs rather than people), and the same form is duplicated in a jacket with cashmere ribbing and silk lining—a hybrid of luxury and technology. A covetable hooded raincoat closes with toggles, also recycled from old parachutes. And pieces in flesh-colored nylon, slightly transparent so that their construction is visible, have an android edge. In a season characterized by an intimate dialogue between the natural and the synthetic, Ervell matches his shapes of things to come with images of the past that are positively homespun, like a classic barn coat, or shirts with curved collars and little box-pleated pockets. They were inspired by the bedshirts that Scandinavian granddads once wore.
see all designers ›
ERROR:
